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SCORM Cloud- Will It Really Change The Game?

Amit Gautam | eLearning, Learning Technology | June 4, 2010 | 7 comments

SCORM Cloud- Will It Really Change The Game? Read this news about SCORM Cloud going live on Monday 7^th June. Craig Weiss also posted a comprehensive product review on his blog – Product Review: SCORM Cloud. Craig opines that the SCORM Cloud is a potential game-changer in the eLearning industry.

Needless to mention, I had to hit the scorm.com website and find out more about SCORM Cloud myself. This post is a mini-quick-review of the SCORM Cloud based on what I could gather from its parent website. Given that it hasn’t been released yet, the review will be revised once the product is launched and there are real customers using it.

To be brutally honest (and with due respect to the scorm.com organization), I could understand the offering but did not really get it’s ‘cloudness’. I am sure once the product is out there and some of our inquisitive Innovation and New Projects team members have had a go at it we would have a clearer picture of its potential, impact on the LMS industry as such and overall value for money.

From what I read on its ‘What it does’ page it appears to be a mini (or maybe micro) LMS hosted on internet allowing anyone to upload SCORM courses and through user registrations offer it to users.

What it specifically offers to solve/do (and my thoughts on each of them)

Correct working of SCORM course
Any LMS worth its name does comply with the SCORM standard and it works pretty well.
Tracking learners outside LMS as well
Better to change the LMS which doesn’t let you track SCORM courses or cannot patch a module to do so. Given that the integration is currently only available for open source LMS systems and all of them are already SCORM compliant (though may have a few bugs) it’s not clear how will it help.
Low cost of SCORM player
In addition to my comments on point 2, if you are using the SCORM Cloud with your LMS which doesn’t have SCORM capability I am guessing that along with the pricing (based on registrations) there would be cost of integrating your LMS with the SCORM Cloud. Based on what I read here – SCORM Cloud pricing –to be honest it is not low. The page does state that the pricing has been designed to make sense compared to use of a full LMS and given that I know of LMS pricing in general I can say that it is not low from any aspect. There are LMS systems which offer SCORM compliance and much more and still have a lower pricing. Maybe I am missing something.
Ready to go as it’s a hosted service
Yes, that’s a distinct benefit

My take

Again, at the risk of sounding critical, SCORM Cloud is definitely a good service for companies/people whose current LMS may be so outdated that it doesn’t have SCORM compliance. However, in practical terms, the SCORM Cloud can be considered an LMS focused purely on SCORM compliance. So for companies using an LMS having SCORM compliance I am not sure what would be the real use of such a service. However, it’s still not launched so I am sure a lot of my questions will be answered after this Monday.

I don’t think it’s going to change the game. IMO, after all, it’s another LMS with a new name!

About The Author

Amit Gautam

Founder & Director - Technology Solutions

Amit has played a key role in bringing an innovative approach to the traditional Learning Management System (LMS) and has been instrumental in putting UpsideLMS on the global map. Acting as a consultant for his clients, he leverages his 16+ years of experience in the eLearning domain and helps them in implementing LMS successfully. At Upside Learning, he leads the Technology Solutions team and orchestrates the Sales operations in the US, the Middle East and India. Amit is an active contributor to the company's blog and many eLearning forums. Amit has spoken at various L&D events in the US, has co-hosted webinars alongside leading industry experts and has authored eBooks on Learning Management Systems. He has served as a judge for the Brandon Hall awards in 2002 and 2004. Amit holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science (REC–Kurukshetra) and a master's in Business Administration (IIM – Lucknow), and has earlier worked in the IT sector.

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Comments ( 7 comments )

Tim Martin June 4, 2010 at 7:18 pm

First of all, thanks for caring enough to check out SCORM Cloud. We really appreciate that… and we appreciate your candor in letting us know what you think of SCORM Cloud based on the early, partial marketing material.
To get a full picture of what SCORM Cloud can, does, and will do, you would definitely be well served to try it. You’re welcome to do that today in its beta form, or starting next week in full release. The beta’s been running for about 2 weeks and we’ve gotten good feedback on it, but there’s a lot to work through. This is particularly true given that some aspects of it are quite different from current deployment models.
To get an accurate picture of how it differs, I would encourage you and others to try a few things.

Log into the beta/UI. In this, you’ll see the simplest applications of SCORM Cloud, which include the ability to invite users to training via public URLs and SCORM Dispatches. This layer of SCORM Cloud is not mind altering. With the exception of Dispatches, most of this stuff has been done before.
Try one of our existing plugins. We’ve integrated SCORM Cloud’s delivery capability with several open source LMSs that lack certain capabilities in the SCORM world. If you really believe that all modern LMSs are supporting SCORM well, you and I differ strongly.
Try developing your own application around SCORM Cloud. This allows you to reach beyond the world of LMSs and deliver trackable learning outside the context of an existing LMS. For many organizations, a standalone LMS is not the right solution.

We believe that learning in general should be available to learners where they want to learn. (I think you subscribe to this theory as well, given your efforts to bring SCORM to mobile platforms. We applaud that effort as well.) SCORM Cloud is our effort to bring standards based learning to them wherever they might operate, be it WordPress, Moodle, Facebook or wherever.

In the end, you’re absolutely right. People need to actually use the thing to see if it changes even the small part of their world that is online learning. Our experience is that SCORM can be exceptionally difficult for organizations and that it remains fundamentally important. Our hope is that SCORM Cloud allows organizations of any type to deliver standards based learning however suits them best.

Thanks again for checking it out.
Rich Chetwynd June 5, 2010 at 2:38 am

Great work Tim, Its great to see SCORM being used in new ways outside of the LMS and I’m sure the true potential of this will unfold as adoption of the SCORM Cloud increases.
I completely agree that learners should be able to access SCORM from anywhere but I also tend to agree with Amit in that this is really just hosted SCORM or SaaS SCORM if you like. While for many SCORM implementations installed behind firewalls etc this might be a game changer to me its really just a hosted SCORM popped from anywhere or running in an iFrame. More of a marketing play.
I think the interesting and potentially innovative part will be in the tracking of actual people and I’m looking forward to see how this happens as tracking SCORM is one thing but knowing the name, email etc of the person and aggregating that information over time is another.
i.e. Would I be embedding a SCORM Cloud package into Facebook or would it just be a link that pops a new window? And when I click on it do you know straight away who I am based on my Facebook credentials or do I have to enter my name, email etc again? Maybe this happens in the dispatch?
Anyway, great work. I think this will be a success and you guys certainly have the resources, connections and domain 🙂 to make it happen.
I look forward to meeting you and talking more about how all of this hangs together.
Cheers,
Rich
Tim Martin June 8, 2010 at 1:43 am

As to whether this is hosted SCORM or SaaS SCORM, I agree with both of you. It is exactly that. The leap is that it’s integrate-able. It can track users, but that isn’t its fundamental intent. We would love for you and others to integrate this capability in the context of your applications. That is the intent. The API means that it’s something more than content running in an iframe. It is connected.
As for the Facebook questions, this depends on the degree to which the application is integrated. We haven’t taken on Facebook to this point. In our early WordPress work, all of the interaction and users are managed by the WordPress experience… There’s no login, and the plugin on WordPress is aware of progress made on SCORM Cloud.
We get that this is a different way of doing things… And that we need to seed the world with these integrations so that the differences from existing LMSs is more apparent, and we’re working on that. Thanks for playing along with us.
george kyaw naing June 8, 2010 at 8:49 am

You’re right: if you are already using a good LMS, you may not be so impressed with SCORM Cloud.
But we, still new to LMS, find the SaaS SCORM a wonderful concept.

Thanks for the info. Nice reading.

george kyaw naing
http://ethicminds.blogspot.com/
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Graham Glass June 28, 2010 at 5:24 am

If anyone is interested, EDU 2.0 for School (http://www.edu20.org) is a free cloud-hosted LMS with built-in support for SCORM 1.2. EDU 2.0 is free, easy-to-use alternative to Moodle, Blackboard, and other LMSs.
Cheers, Graham
Craig Weiss September 1, 2010 at 5:45 am

A couple of points.
1. The LMS comes with the system – You do not have to use it, and frankly for some people it is fine. I’m not saying it is a good system, it is okay.
What I am sold on – and focused on in my article, is the “Cloud”, the ability to create ur own courses in the tool or upload into the tool and launch them wherever you are – outside of their LMS. This is VERY IMPORTANT.
2. Anyone can upload their own courses into SCORM Cloud or create them with their authoring tool and launch them – again, not being tied to their LMS – to anywhere on the net. So, the courses can be viewed in Facebook. They can be viewed on their web site (if they setup it that way), a learning portal, a 3D world – again if they setup appropriately with the coding, etc.
3. It can be seen in another LMS – Again, ANOTHER KEY. So you can launch it in your own group page u create in your LMS and launch the courses via a Link or via a link in your course catalog or you can launch the courses in your own open source LMS you create or ones you use that are open source.
4. You can launch the courses in WordPress, even Moodle – again another LMS, besides their system.
I disagree that it is another LMS under another name. In my opinion based on what I have seen in the market, it isn’t.

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